


the waters and the wild

by ashen_key



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Comment Fic, Gen, Horror, I Don't Even Know, Prompt Fic, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 12:58:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashen_key/pseuds/ashen_key
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The girl in the water opens her eyes, and they are glowing green with witch-fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the waters and the wild

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff Promptathon](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/60569.html), for the prompt;
> 
>  
> 
> _Fantasy or Sci-Fi AU/Crossover/Fusion ANYTHING. More love needed. Ghosts, Vamps, Shifters, Aliens, Hunters, Peace Keepers, Time travelers, Mythical creatures, shamans, mediums, banshees, nymphs, intergalactic explorers, people who research these things, ANYTHING...any time period, anywhere._
> 
>  
> 
> I was going to write a merfolk!AU, but this required less world-building. That is the only justification for the following that I can think of. 
> 
> Title comes from W. B. Yeats' poem _The Stolen Child_.
> 
> WARNING: graphic violence, consumption of humans.

It may have happened like this:

_There is a boy and there is a girl. He's well-to-do; he likes books, and has a future like so many people who have money do. She dances at the local hall for the traders and sailors; she's the loveliest girl most of them have seen, and she dances too fast for them to see the repairs in her skirt._

_The girl is hungry and the boy likes to indulge. Food that makes her lips glisten with grease, drink that makes her cheeks flushed; she'll exchange kisses for books, keep reading even as he slides his hand up her thigh._

_They like to go walking down the river, down where it branches off into little secluded streams, and it's there that the girl tells the boy that she might be with child._

_The boy who likes to indulge doesn't like consequences, so he grabs a rock and hits the girl in the head. She stumbles back into stream, falls to her knees, and he holds her under the water until she stops fighting._

_He leaves her there, floating face-down with her red hair spreading over the water like a fan. He goes back to the town and he goes back to his books and his future, and maybe he'll confess to his mother, and she'll hold him close and whisper that nothing bad is going to happen to him._

And then this happened:

_The girl in the water opens her eyes, and they are glowing green with witch-fire._

– – 

She's so _hungry_. 

Always. Constantly. She'll swim in the water and catch fish, eat them at the bottom of the river and watch as the shapes on the surface spoil the flickering sun, and she'll _still_ be hungry. 

She knows what the shapes are, but she can never remember unless she's eaten. Then she can remember. They are _steamboats_. 

She can't remember what they do. 

The sun comes and the sun goes, and the moon comes out to play before hiding again, and it's a beat like a drum. She remembers drums. Hit them, make noise, but the only noise she makes when she hits her hand into a rock is a yelp.

Rocks, then, are not drums. She'll remember that, she thinks, as her bones snap and crack and move back into place. 

She remembers how to dance, too. She likes dancing. It's a _memory_ , even if she can't remember it. She can pull herself out of the water and she can spin, she can kick, she can make even her wet skirt flare out. 

But only underneath the playful moon. Daylight is watertime, she knows that deep within her bones. Daylight is watertime and water is _safe_. 

She remembers trying to scream while water fills her mouth. That was when water was a bad thing. It's not now, but- 

Safe is good, she thinks. 

The sun is being hidden because there is a shape above her – a _boat_ – and then something sharp hits the water. Something long and sharp slices her arm and there is blood in the water. _Her_ blood in the water, and it hurts, and she's scared. 

She screams. 

She screams and she shoves the boat, and shoves it again until it rocks and rocks and slips over itself. There is a man in the water now, heavy and thrashing, and _he hurt her._

(She's so hungry)

She lunges in and he hits her, hits her again, but she can hold him until he stops fighting. When he stops fighting, she'll be safe. 

She's safe. She's safe now, he's floating in the water, and she's so _hungry_. 

She starts to bite. 

Throat is easy as clothes are hard, but there'll be meat under his clothes. She remembers. She eats and she remembers, and she's remembering so many things that aren't staying in her head. 

_Heart_ , she thinks, and she grabs a rock from the riverbed to crack open his ribs so she can wrench it out. She eats the man's heart and she remembers.

She remembers her name. 

– – 

This is one way the following may have happened:

_“-six deaths in eight months,” Lord Fury says. “All men. All either in or around one stream, or in the river connecting. All of them our kind of suspicious.”_

_“What kind of creature we talking about?” Barton asks._

_“Rusalka is a good bet,” says Coulson. “There was a girl's body found in that stream a year ago. Local, Natasha Aliandaughter. No living family mentioned, worked as a dancer.”_

_“So, plenty of suspects, and no one's looking," Barton says. "Suicide or murder?” He is a hunter, and the difference is important for working out how to kill the unquiet dead._

_Coulson's dry voice gets drier as he says,“Town guard claim suicide, but I suspect someone paid them off. Stream wasn't deep enough for suicide, not with the main river that close.”_

_“So, either kill her or her murderer. Either way, she's free to move on. That all?”_

_Lord Fury nods, and so Barton gets to his feet. He ducks his head at Fury with a muttered, “Milord,” nods to Coulson, and is out the door._

– – 

Natasha sings. 

She remembers so much now. Not everything, but the men come, and the men watch her, and the men listen to her sing, and then she eats their hearts and she _remembers_ more and more. 

She remembers dancing on a stage, and a stage means _planks of dead wood and burning torches_. She likes dancing on grass now, underneath the moon with the trees for an accompaniment. She sings and she dances, and as she spins in the clearing she can feel eyes on her.

Human eyes. _Male_ eyes. Eyes she knows. 

“Alexi,” she croons, twirling to a stop as her wet skirts hit her legs. “Hello, Alexi.”

He's staring at her, and he's looking young and _alive_ , and she hates him so much that she smiles. 

“Do you still think I'm pretty, Alexi?”

She's not. She knows what she looks like; her hair green and tangled like seaweed, her eyes glowing with green fire, her skin pale as a corpse. 

Natasha (and her name is _Natasha, Natasha, Natasha_ , she's not going to forget it ever again) hums and sways closer, closer, but Alexi looks up at a tree and then starts to run. 

Run _away_ , and he's too fast and he's going to escape and Natasha _screams_.

There is no water in her mouth and her scream echoes around the forest.

“He kill you, lady?” comes a voice from up a tree.

She's angry ( _hungry_ ) enough that she just screams, “YES.” 

Alexi crumples with an arrow in his back and there is no thought in her mind, just rage and hunger; she runs towards Alexi, lunges at him, and he's trying to escape but she can pin him down, she can claw at him, she can bite his throat so that now _he_ can't scream. 

She rips his clothes, breaks his ribs to get at his heart. She feels calmer once she's finished eating it, and doesn't even bother trying to wipe the blood off her face as she gets to her feet, turns around, scans the trees for the archer. 

“And you're still here,” says the archer. 

“...yes?” Natasha says, finally finding him. Even with her eyesight, he's too hidden by clothing for a description. 

“You're not supposed to be.”

“I do many things I'm not _supposed_ to,” she snaps. 

“Clearly.”

Natasha crosses her arms. “Are you going to shoot me?”

“I...Not sure that'll work. I got another idea. Come with me.”

“...I beg your pardon?”

“Do you _really_ want to spend the rest of...however long you're going to be around here? Don't get me wrong, it's a nice stream. A little quiet, though, except for the occasional murder.”

“I wouldn't kill them if they left me alone.” 

He sighs. “Which they won't. But my lord, we keep an eye out for-”

“For things like me?”

“Yes. Things and people that go bump in the night. You'd be valuable. Make more money than dancing.”

“What need have I of money now?”

“...you could buy fish?”

“Books,” she says firmly. “I want books. I need to live in the water, but I want books.”

“We can do books.”

Natasha eyes him, tilts her head. “Get down from the tree, archer.”

He slings his bow on his back and climbs down. He walks over to her like he's not afraid of her, and holds out his hand. “Name's Barton. Clint Barton. Pleased to meet you.”

She hesitates, and then tosses her chin up. She's not afraid of him, either. She clasps his hand with hers, and he doesn't flinch at the slick blood covering her skin.

“I am Natasha.”

“I know,” he says. And then he says, “Your eyes are still glowing, but I think your hair is red again.”

– – 

This is what follows:

_There is a woman. They call her a woman even though she died at seventeen and will never age, even though she is undead. It's a sign of respect._

_The archer still calls her lady, and when they come back from hunting the predators of mankind, they go to the river by their lord's castle. She sits in the water, and she reads as he lies on the bank and watches the clouds. He is not afraid of her, nor her of him._

_Sometimes, she reads aloud. Sometimes, she reads whole books aloud and fills the air with words._

_But only when she wants to._


End file.
